Günter Wand And The Hamburg Radio Symphony In Music Of Fortner, Webern And Schubert – 1985 – Past Daily Mid-Week Concert.

Günter Wand and The Hamburg Radio Symphony – Music Of Fortner, Webern And Schubert – Recorded September 11, 1985 – Deutsche Welle Transcription Service, Köln.

The legendary Günter Wand in concert this week. Leading the Hamburg Radio Symphony in music of Wolfgang Fortner, Anton Webern and Franz Schubert – recorded on September 11, 1985.

The Concert starts with incidental music to Wolfgang Fortner’s opera Blood Wedding, which Wand conducted the premier in 1957. It’s followed by two performances of the Five Pieces for Orchestra by Anton Webern and concluding with Schubert’s Symphony Number 9 in C Major.

This from The Telegraph tribute to Wand on his death in February 2002:

By Bruce Duffie:

“Gunter Wand was born at Elberfeld on January 7 1912. After lessons in Wuppertal and at Cologne University, he studied at Cologne Conservatory and High School for Music under Phillip Jarnach for composition and Paul Baumgartner for piano. He worked as repetiteur and assistant conductor at Wuppertal and Allenstein before becoming chief conductor at Detmold. He was then principally an opera conductor, specialising in Mozart and Verdi.

He was a conductor at Cologne Opera from 1939 until 1944, when the opera house was destroyed. For a year Wand went to Salzburg to conduct the Mozarteum Orchestra, but returned to Cologne in 1945 as music director of the opera. Cologne’s population had been reduced by war from nearly half a million to 40,000, and Wand wanted to take part in the revival of the city initiated by his friend Konrad Adenauer.

He now began to study the orchestral repertoire so that from 1946 he could take over the Gurzenich concerts which had once been conducted by Fritz Steinbach. This engagement, on a 10-year contract, was later extended to a life appointment. Wand also joined the teaching staff of Cologne High School for Music, becoming a professor in 1948.

Although Wand’s programmes usually had a classical basis (some would say bias), he did not neglect contemporary music. He conducted much Stravinsky and Bartók (he recorded the latter’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta) and works by the Cologne composer Bernd-Alois Zimmermann. He also conducted works by Messiaen, Varèse and Ligeti. In 1974 he resigned his Cologne posts and went to Switzerland as guest conductor of the Berne Symphony Orchestra. He then began his regular association with the Hamburg Radio Orchestra, becoming its chief conductor in 1982, and with Munich. He was also a composer.”

Enjoy the concert.

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